Applying a Cultural Landscape Approach to the Urban Context

Abstract

The challenges inherent in global climate change span the continum of diametrically opposed knowns and unknowns (National Research Council 2012). While cultural resources in general face serious threats from the impacts of climate change, cultural landscapes are presented with different and, in some cases, even more problematic issues within a number of broad categories. The challenges to long-term cultural landscape viability derive from many arenas, including political will, economic conditions, landscape identification, diversity of significance guidelines, and often ill-defined policy, management, and protection frameworks. The effects of global climate change present perhaps the greatest, and least controllable, challenge to long-term resiliency and viability of significant cultural landscapes across international borders. In the US, the National Park Service (NPS), in its role as manager and protector of the national parks and as the lead federal agency for conservation efforts nationally, has established climate change guidelines through its Climate Change Response Strategy.